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Cycle 2008: The new Shimano Dura-Ace Di2

Yesterday at Cycle 2008 in London, I was lucky enough to get a chance to try out the new Shimano Dura-Ace Di2. What a fantastic groupset! The response time to this electronic groupset was amazing and it felt a whole lot quicker than standard cable operated shifters. The downside to it all I found was that you could only shift one gear at a time in either direction.

What really impressed me was how the groupset auto-corrected itself and how the two derailleurs (front and back) worked in sync with each other. Plus, shifting the gears was a new experience too. No need to push the levers all the way to the left (for rear-gear shifting) or right (for the front derailleur) anymore. Now all that was needed was just to push the two small buttons behind each lever.

So, enough of that. Below are two clips I took while trying out the new groupset. The first clip is one that I took (a better view of the product IMHO). The second clip is one that the Shimano sales guy took of me on the bike trying out the groupset.

Now, I just need to start working on trying to convince the guys at Shimano to let me have a demo groupset to do a user-review of the product. So if any PR or marketing folk are reading this – “Please may I? You’ll get a great review.”